


Sick Day

by Featherfire



Category: Free!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 18:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10882782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Featherfire/pseuds/Featherfire
Summary: Haru is sick. Rin comes to take care of him.





	Sick Day

**Author's Note:**

> No real pairings. MakoHaru if you want, RInHaru if you want. Very mild spoilers for the end of Starting Days.

The insistent ringing of his doorbell rose Haru out of his feverish stupor. He rolled---quite literally---out of bed and got to his feet, then shuffled downstairs muttering irritably all the way. The chime made his head hurt worse and reverberated off his clogged ears in a very unpleasant way.

He slid the door open and put on his best glare for whoever was on the other side. He was expecting Makoto, possibly with Nagisa and Rei in tow, or maybe even Makoto's mother---but it was none of them. It was Rin.

"Hey," Rin said, smiling his pointy smile. "Makoto said you were sick."

"Ungh," Haru agreed.

"He has back-to-back swim classes until evening, and he couldn't get hold of Nagisa or Rei, so I volunteered." He held up the plastic shopping bags he held in each hand.

"I don't nee... nee..." He broke off on a sneeze, turning his head at the last second.

"Gross. Get inside, don't breathe your germs all over me," Rin groused, and stepped forward, forcing Haru to step back or be knocked over. Knocking him over wouldn't be very difficult at the moment. Haru grunted and moved into the house, watching as Rin stepped in, toed his shoes off, and headed straight for the kitchen.

"You look like shit!" Rin went on, sounding entirely too cheery. He smiled at Haru from the kitchen doorway as Haru slid the front door closed. "Just go back to bed. I'll bring it up when it's ready."

"What are you making?" Haru asked, suspicious.

"Food," Rin grinned, and breezed into the kitchen.

Haru stayed in the genkan, glaring at the place Rin had disappeared. He was going to make a mess in his kitchen. Did he even know where things were kept? He hadn't spent much time in Haru's kitchen. Haru didn't have the energy to argue with him. With a little groan at the prospect of the climb ahead of him, he made his way slowly back up the stairs. 

Bed felt so good.

He wasn't sure how long he dozed, how long Rin clattered around in his kitchen making a mess of things. The door opening woke him; he half opened one eye.

"You awake?" Rin asked, in as gentle a voice as Haru ever heard him use. Haru grunted at him.

"Can you sit up?"

"I'm not an invalid," Haru muttered, and pushed himself slowly into a sitting position.

Rin set a tray down over his legs, making sure it was steady before taking his hands away. "Have you taken anything for it?"

Haru scowled at him. "Last night," he answered, then looked away. "The only medicine we have is expired."

Rin rolled his eyes. "Typical," he said. "Well, eat. Enjoy."

Rice porridge with green onion and chicken. A mug of yuzu tea. Toast with butter and jam. A cup of pudding. Haru peeked up at Rin through his bangs. "You made all this?"

"Of course I did. All except the pudding, anyway. It wasn't that hard." 

"Why are you being so nice?"

"Makoto seemed to think you were about to die, so I said I'd take care of you." He chuckled. He pulled the chair from the desk out to the middle of the room and sat down, crossing his legs.

"Are you going to watch me eat?" Haru wanted to know.

"I just thought you might want some company."

Haru glared at him. But the gingery-oniony steam from the okayu was actually giving him an appetite, so he dutifully picked up the spoon. "Ita---" he tried, but sneezed before he could finish the word. "---dakimasu." Once he started eating, his body reminded him how starved it was and he ate with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. He even finished most of it. Peeking up at Rin through his hair again, he mumbled, "Thanks."

Rin smiled. "No problem. Do you feel better?"

"Not really." Haru reached for a tissue and blew his nose. "Maybe a little."

Rin laughed, and picked up the tray. "Rest," he ordered. "I'm going to go clean up."

Haru watched him go, then lay back again, wondering if perhaps he was dreaming---or if Rin had been abducted by aliens and replaced.

When he next woke, Rin was back in his room, sitting in the chair again and thumbing through one of Haru's sketchbooks.

 _"Hey,"_ Haru protested, sitting up and attempting to reach for it, wrest it from Rin's grasp---but Rin was several feet away, and Haru still had no energy despite the protein he'd had in the chicken.

"This stuff is good," Rin marveled. _"Really_ good." He held up the sketchbook to face Haru, showing him his own drawing of Makoto. Haru drew a lot of Makoto, purely because he was the subject Haru saw most often, and therefore he was the most easy to draw. "I heard you could draw, but I didn't realize you could _draw._ This isn't just drawing, this is _art."_

Haru looked away. "Not really," he said, then glanced back. "Why were you snooping in my things?"

"It was open on your desk, Haru." Rin laughed and turned the book back around. As he did, something fell out from between the pages. Haru heard the shuffle of paper as it fluttered to the floor and quickly turned back to face Rin, who was already bending to pick up the fallen letter. "What's this, a love letter?"

"Rin---"

But Rin was already unfolding the pages, seeing his own writing on the paper. His eyes widened. "Why do you have this?" he demanded, slim brows drawing down in a puzzled glare.

Haru looked away again. "Yamazaki gave it to me," he answered. "He said it was written to me."

"That's ridiculous," Rin complained, but he was looking down at the letter, at the places he'd erased the characters for "you" and replaced it with "Haru." Faint, but unmistakable. "I wrote this to Sousuke, not you."

Haru stared at the stripes on his comforter and didn't answer.

"When did he give it to you?"

"First year of middle school. We had a tournament against Sano and he gave it to me then."

"Why do you _still_ have it?" Rin pressed.

Haru shrugged. The two pages of the letter, he knew, were deeply creased from repeated folding and unfolding, the original pencil slightly smudged from years of handling. "You can have it back, if you want it." He'd nearly memorized it anyway.

"You should give it back to Sousuke," Rin said. "It belongs to him." But he refolded the letter and shoved it back in the sketchbook. Rising to his feet, he put the sketchbook back on the desk and replaced the chair. "Makoto will be off work soon," he said. He wasn't looking at Haru, but staring down at the desk. "Will you be okay until then?"

"I'm not dying," Haru told him.

"Fine, fine." With a dismissive handwave, Rin crossed to the door. He paused with his hand on the door pull, looking at Haru with an unreadable expression. "See you later."

Haru gave him a nod.

By the time Makoto got there, Haru was feeling well enough to hobble downstairs to see what kind of mess Rin left in his kitchen---only to find the kitchen spotless, probably cleaner than it had been before Rin came over. There were leftovers in the fridge with instructions on how to reheat each dish. Haru stood in the doorway, staring at his impeccably clean kitchen, and actually jumped a little when the doorbell rang.

He spent some time assuring a fretful Makoto that no, he was fine, Makoto didn't need to stay over, he was feeling better, see? He was even out of bed, and Rin left even left him food. Makoto reluctantly went home, with an assurance that he'd be back in the morning and pleas to call him if he started feeling worse, he'd be right over! A cool breeze came in off the ocean, cooling his brow as Haru stood by his fence and watched Makoto go down the stairs. At the turn to his own house, Makoto turned and waved, and Haru raised a hand to wave back. His lips quirked in a slight smile, one that Makoto likely couldn't see.

He went upstairs and sat at his desk. He leafed slowly through the sketchbook---pictures of Makoto, Nagisa, Rei, Rin himself, even one or two of Yamazaki and Kisumi, as well as various cats and birds and sketches of buildings---until he found the place Rin had shoved the letter. Pulling out the creased pages, he reread the letter, picking over his memories from elementary school, from middle school, from high school. "Idiot," he whispered, unsure if he was talking to Rin or himself. He refolded the letter, but instead of putting it back in the sketchbook, he went to his bookcase and pulled out one of his books... a Christmas gift from Rei, a coffee table photobook about the world's oceans. He paged through until he found a shot of the ocean in Australia. He gazed at it for a moment---though not the beach he'd visited personally, the unfamiliar coastline was no less beautiful than what he could find in Japan---before tucking the letter into the spine of the book and replacing the book on the shelf.


End file.
